


Blank

by buttsbeyondbutts



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic, Aromantic Darcy Lewis, Bigotry & Prejudice, Bullying, Darcy Lewis-centric, Mild Language, Original Character(s), Pansexual Character, Pansexual Darcy Lewis, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Self-Acceptance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:12:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4142430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsbeyondbutts/pseuds/buttsbeyondbutts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where the name of your soul mate is inscribed upon your skin, Darcy Lewis is blank. </p><p>Five Times she felt bad about it and one time she didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank

  1. The first time Darcy Lewis had sex, her partner had a penis and the name Juliet Feldstein in plain block letters on their clavicle.




“I think,” Darcy frowned, trying to recall all the porn she’d ever seen. “I think you gotta move your hips up or something?”

“Okay,” Cameron said with all the awkwardness of seventeen. They shifted carefully and Darcy tried for the life of her to stay in the moment and not wonder about what was on TV right then. She could just see her electric clock on the night stand. Had it seriously only been fifteen minutes?

“D-do you feel that?” Cameron asked.

“I feel it,” Darcy said, “I’m just not sure how I… feel about it, I guess?”

“Should I pull out-?” Cameron asked in a squeaky voice.

“If you want-” and there they went. Darcy sighed and sat up. Cameron had scooched to the far end of the bed, which wasn’t all that far but she could take the hint. For a brief moment, she fantasized about being a jerk and leaving. If she got into the shower in the next five minutes, she could be out and dry in time for _How It’s Made_ , Cameron was her friend though, and they’d asked her to help them.

“So,” she said, keeping her distance, “how ya feelin’?”

“Stupid,” Cameron said, crossing their arms in front of them.

“You’re not stupid, Cam,” Darcy said immediately. “The first time always sucks… I heard. That’s why we’re getting it out of the way!”

“I guess,” They said, “I just thought… that’s what girls like right? I mean you told me-”

“To be far, your junk doesn’t vibrate and my toys don’t have performance anxiety,” Darcy said before she could stop herself. “Which you shouldn’t have, by the way, you’re hot and interesting and you’re nice. Juliet Feldstein is gonna love you. It’s kinda guaranteed.”

Cameron smiled softly, their fingers idly tracing the letters just above their chest. “I just wanna give them everything, you know? I want my soul mate to be happy.”

“They will be,” Darcy said. “We’re gonna practice and you’re gonna get better and you’re gonna kick Juliet Feldstein’s ass… in like a romantic sex way!” Darcy had no idea what to do with her hands so she shoved them underneath her armpits to stop herself from gesturing. “And hey, there’s other stuff us vagina havers like! Y’know tongue stuff.”

Cameron chuckled and glanced back at her with a tired smile. “I don’t think I’m up for that tonight,” They said.

“That’s cool,” Darcy sat back on her haunches. “You wanna watch TV or… I guess I could drive you home or-”

“TV sounds good,” Cameron said, reaching for their sweats, “You’re lucky you don’t have to worry about this kind of thing.”

Darcy swallowed. She got off the bed and stretched the kink out of her neck. “I”m gonna take a shower,” she said, “You can pick the movie, if you wanna.”

Cameron nodded, not looking at her. Darcy went into the bathroom and scoured every inch of her blank, nameless skin, with soap and water.

2\. They sat in a semi circle around one big candle, with several smaller ones surrounding them. When she first arrived, Darcy had a terrible vision of stepping on one but now she’d had a whole rum and coke and two jello shots and everything was buzzing pleasantly.

“Darcy,” a blond girl named Karen, with the words Benjamin Larson curling down her neck, fixed her steely blue gaze on her. Darcy met it with a crooked smile that she hoped came across as a challenge. She had her arm around a girl name Sun and she could kick Karen’s ass. “Truth or Dare.”

“Dare,” Darcy said. She had already eaten the expired yogurt in the fridge, made out with Sun and sang Teenage Dream while hopping on one foot to the delight of the ametuer film makers.

Karen pursed her lips, as if she didn’t already have one prepared. “Show us your soul mark.”

Darcy’s buzz vanished. She scoffed rolling her eyes. “No.”

“You can’t say no,” a girl named Megan, Karen’s right hand woman, reminded. “You said Dare. You have to do it.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Darcy said, glaring.

“Pick something else,” Sun said, her arm circling protectively around Darcy’s shoulder.

“No,” Karen said, crossing her arms. “Show us your soul mark.”

“No.” Darcy snapped. “Pick something else.”

“Why? Are you embarrassed of your soul mate?  Is it somebody gross? Do we know him? Is it the dean?”

“No, shut up.” Darcy said, making sure to keep her tone flat and even. “I’m not embarrassed, you don’t know shit and I’m not showing you anything.”

Karen closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Oh my gosh,” she said, eyes popping open, “what is that smell you guys? It smells like chicken.”

“Fuck off, Karen.” Darcy said, standing up. The other girl cackled behind her.

“Oh my god, I told you guys,” Karen laughed. “Darcy doesn’t have a soul mate. I told you, she’s a robot.”

Darcy turned and slammed the door on their laughter. Her hands clenched into fists and she wanted to hit something… Karen preferably but then she’d fuck up her scholarships because god knew that bitch would press charges. She slumped down on the floor, pushing aside angry tears. Fuck Karen.

“Darcy,” Sun said, pushing open the door. “I brought your shoes.”

“Thanks,” Darcy said, inhaling and wishing she hadn’t when her crying snot got pulled in with the breath.

“I’m sorry they-” the black haired girl struggled for the right words. “Karen’s a bitch.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agreed. “She’s right though.”

Sun blinked down at her. “What?”

Darcy shrugged. She might as well rip off the bandaid right now and save herself the trouble. “I didn’t show you guys my mark because there isn’t one. There never has been. I don’t have a soul mate.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. Darcy looked up to see her clutching her shoulder, where the name Kim Jeung could be seen in beautiful script whenever Sun wore a tank top. “Are you sure? Sometimes-”

“I’ve checked.” Darcy said. When she was little, her mother sent her to doctors to try and find the mark hidden on her body, x rays to see if it was on her bones. “There’s nothing.”

Sun shook her head, unable to process it. “But,” she said, “Everybody has a soul mate.”

Darcy shrugged.

3\. Doctor Jane Foster didn’t have a soul mate and Darcy could have loved her just for that. She had a birthmark, a squiggle of lines between her breasts that could have been a soul mark but it wasn’t actually any language in existence. “My mom took photos of it and sent it around to like… fifty different linguists when I was a baby,” Jane told her, swallowing her fifth cup of coffee that morning. “Somebody said it looked Scandinavian so I got to spend summers in Norway and Denmark till I was fifteen and I had to start college.”

“You’re not like… bummed about it or anything?” Darcy asked, remembering legions of doctors and psychiatrists frowning at her body like it was puzzle to be solved.

Jane shook her head, golden brown waves shaking with it. “Naw,” she said, pulling that hair around her shoulder, “Check this out.” There, on the back of her neck, the word “science” had been tattooed in Jane’s neat handwriting.

“Nerd!” Darcy said appreciatively.

Jane smiled brightly and let her hair fall back. “I got it when I was about your age. You know science is just a basis for gaining and organizing knowledge? People think it’s that,” she gestured to the telescopes, computers and stacks of data surrounding them, “but that’s just the end result. Science is the process through which we gain knowledge. From the day we’re born, we’re trained to think of those marks as the end all be all of our lives. the beginning and the goal of humanity. We think they’re what makes us human but there’s so much more out there! There’s so much more we can explore and learn! A soulmate isn’t required for that, Darcy.”

Darcy never wanted to kiss anyone as badly as she wanted to kiss Doctor Jane Foster just then. The most gorgeous woman she’d ever known glanced down at her computer and nearly dropped her coffee. “Compiled!” she said eagerly, bouncing back to her feet. “Wake up, Doctor Selvig, kay? I think we’ve got something!”

Darcy spent the next six months alternating between waking Dr. Selvig up and trying to make Jane go to sleep. She helped cart around their equipment and entered data, searching for Jane’s something more. She went to sleep at her desk and didn’t have time to double check her skin to see if her soulmate was born yet. She worked and she made sure Jane got at least one real meal a day, even when “something big” was happening and she felt… whole for some reason. Which was weird because not all that much had changed except now she could just exist and not worry about the name that wasn’t on her skin.

When she touched Jane, one night when they were both tired and lonely out in the desert, it didn’t change anything. Sex with Jane was literally just sex, because they both felt like it. For the first time, Darcy wasn’t practice for someone else who had called dibs on her partner. Jane didn’t wake up wracked with guilt about cheating on her soulmate because Science was apparently chill with it. The next morning, everything went blissfully back to normal.

Until a muscle bound blond guy appeared  with  Jane’s name on his left bicep, which was incidentally as big as Darcy’s head.

Darcy liked Thor too. He was big and funny and apparently from space, which was apparently why Jane’s soul mark didn’t appear in any human language. If he’d gone to high school or college with her, his would probably be the name she said when bitches like Karen Brendeen asked who her soulmate was. But he was Jane’s soulmate and she looked at him like he was the key to understanding everything in the universe and Darcy was alone again.

4\. Thor went back to space. Darcy could have hated them for that alone. Jane stared up at the desert sky, waiting for almost a full day, before Darcy managed to guide her back inside.

She didn’t cry, at least not the way you were supposed to when your soul mate got sucked up into space and you didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Darcy saw the tears well in Jane’s eyes but they never seemed to fall. Even when she blinked and shook her head, like Thor was an unknown variable she couldn’t pin down, the tears never fell.

Jane alternated between doing nothing and trying to do everything. One week, she was in pajamas, eating ice cream straight from the carton like they were on an episode of _Grey’s Anatomy_ and staring mournfully at the night sky. Then, in a few days, she was showered, up at four in the morning scouring data and scrawling out equations on chalk boards. “I didn’t need a soulmate before,” she said to Darcy, even though Darcy never brought the subject up, “I don’t need one now.”

When Erik abandoned them for SHIELD, Jane took it nearly as hard as the loss of Thor. Darcy’s internship ended but she never mentioned it, forging Jane’s signature just so she could graduate. Jane needed her. Her friends, such as there were, rolled their eyes and bluntly asked if they were fucking. Her mom frowned and phrased it differently but Darcy knew what she meant. They weren’t fucking, not since Thor barreled into their lives, but Darcy liked her life better with Jane in it. For that to happen, someone needed to make sure Jane ate, that she got approximately eight hours of sleep a night, give or take, and she wasn’t dying of exposure in the desert. After a few months, Jane came back to herself, back to Darcy. The woman who showed her the world was more than a name on, or off, her skin slowly emerged from the broken heart of Doctor Jane Foster and Darcy could relax.

Then Thor came back.

He came back to Earth the first time, not back to Jane. Later, it came out that it was his brother invading New York with space whales and army guys that looked a little bit like grasshoppers with guns and Thor had to take him back up to space for space trial after he and Iron Man and Captain America and some giant green dude kicked his ass. Darcy couldn’t really stay mad at him after that but at first all she could see was Jane starring at the television, silent, her face ghost white. She didn’t speak until it was all over and then just a quiet curse under her breath before she informed Darcy she was going to New York.

Of course, Darcy came too. When they arrived, Thor was back in space and Jane gave up. “I’m done,” she told Darcy, and it terrified her.

By “I’m done,” of course, Jane meant she would stop looking for Thor. By “I’m done,” she meant she would start dating other people. Darcy didn’t know why since Jane had never dated anyone before. Eric, before he went crazy, said that Jane’s last relationship, with the infamous Donald, ended because he said she was too into her work. Jane was still into her work but now she washed her hair, put on make up and went out to dinner with boring men from the internet.

Darcy tried not to be pissed at her. Jane had, for all intents and purposes, lost her soul mate. Darcy would never know what that felt like but if Jane needed sex, she could come to Darcy. Darcy wouldn’t expect anything from her, wouldn’t try and replace Thor as if anyone really could.

She couldn’t imagine that Jane really was trying to replace her soul mate. Maybe make him jealous, if he could really see everything from space bridge or where ever. Jane had told her but Darcy forgot. Maybe that was why she only sought out men and left Darcy to fend for herself.

When Thor came back, took Jane up into space and back and reversed gravity somehow for a little bit, Darcy had to check out somehow. She grabbed Ian, the intern she got because mama ducking Jane’s emotional state actually took a lot of time and she needed someone around who cared more about science than they cared about Doctor Jane Foster, and they boned when the earth got turned right side up.

They fucked and Ian was smart enough to keep his mouth shut after. Darcy could have loved him for that alone.

Except she didn’t. She didn’t love him or Jane or anyone. Not the way she was supposed to anyway.

He lay on his stomach, watching her. “Was that- was I okay?” he said, breaking the blessed silence.

“You were great, kid,” Darcy said, staring up at the night sky, filled with a million mysteries beyond her blank skin. “You got a lucky soul mate somewhere.”

6\. Thor came back and stayed. Jane was happier than Darcy had ever seen her. Thor was happy. Darcy doubted he could be upset or angry or unhappy for any real length of time but he was quieter than he was in New Mexico. Every so often, she would catch him staring up into the night sky, trying to see past the stars.

“Do you miss it?” she asked one evening after dinner, when Jane and Erik were busy arguing about their findings.

Thor smiled wide but not as wide as he had before. “It is good to be in Midgard,” he said, “but Asgard is never far from my thoughts when I am here. It is the same in reverse.”

“Must be pretty nifty,” she said, “You were up there over a year.”

“Nay,” Thor shook his head, taking a drink of his ale which  was about 15 proof and he drank like it was apple juice, “I was not long in Asgard. After Loki’s trial, The Allfather tasked me with restoring peace to the rest of the nine realms.”

“Seriously?” Darcy smirked, “Were you the first choice? God of Thunder Smash It With A Hammer, the diplomat?”

Thor laughed, soft but hearty. “You would wonder, Darcy Lewis, to learn how much diplomacy depends on a well placed Hammer smash. You recall the warriors three and the Lady Sif, from our battle in the desert?”

“Yeah,” Oh yeah, Darcy still had dreams about Sif.

“They helped,” Thor said, looking up fondly at the stars. “I do not doubt they are repeating the tales of our victories even now in the feasts of Asgard.”

“Do you think you’ll go back?” Darcy asked, watching Jane point furiously at on particular data set as Erik shook his head.

“I am certain I shall,” Thor said, “As certain as I am to return again to Midgard after. There are so many battles spread between the realms and so many friends to fight along side. To limit myself to but one… it cannot be done.”

“Not even for Jane?” Darcy asked in a low voice. She couldn’t tell if she was angry or not, if she was asking to protect her friend or if she only wanted to test the limits of the soul mark, whether it consumed Thor the way it seemed to consume humanity.

Thor’s handsome face grew soft, thoughtful. After a long pause, he sighed. “For My Lady Jane, I would try. I do not oft war within myself. I do not know if I would be victorious in that endeavor.” He brightened almost immediately. “Fortunately, she has not asked for such a boon.”

“Yeah she wouldn’t.” Darcy said, fondly.

“No,” Thor agreed. “Nor would I ask her to give up her quest for answers the mysteries of the universe.”

“They’re not exactly comparable.”

“Are they not?” Thor asked, blinking. “I should not have come to Earth had I not been born a warrior, nor should my Jane have needed to visit Asgard if she had not found the Aether in her quest to slake her thirst for knowledge. Had she not taken you and Erik Selvig into the storm, I should never have met you, nor, I suspect, reclaimed my birthright. There is risk to love but the reward outweighs the danger.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Darcy said.

“Because you do not have the soul mark?” Thor asked, tilting his head like a dog trying to listen better. Darcy didn’t say anything. Thor shrugged. “Most on Asgard do not have such a mark unless the entire populace has hidden theirs in shame. My own made no sense to me until I met Jane. Before her, it was simply a mark upon my skin, a part of myself but hardly the whole. Had fate conspired differently, I may have lived all my days without understanding its meaning, nor do I imagine it would have troubled me. Do you believe you are incomplete without such a mark?”

“I don’t know,” Darcy sighed. “Everyone else seems to think it’s a big deal, except Jane and you I guess.” She stared up at the sky, though her answers weren’t there any more than they’d been in Jane’s bed, or Ian’s arms or anywhere else she’d tried to fix herself. “I can’t… will myself into a soulmate. I can’t make myself fall in love. Whatever I do, I’m always gonna be this blank person. There’s nobody with my name on them and I can’t think of anybody whose name I’d put on me.”

“No,” Thor agreed, “but there are many type of love. One is no greater than another. You have marked those around you with more than words, Darcy Lewis. I know Jane would agree.”

“Thanks,” Darcy said. She leaned forward for her own bottle and pressed it to her lips. It was empty. She stood quickly, Thor rising with her. “I’m gonna get a fresh one,” Darcy said, making the effort to sound breezy. “You make sure Jane doesn’t push Erik off the roof.”

Thor nodded. “I shall catch him, if she does.” He promised and turned back towards his soulmate.

Darcy went inside, climbing down into the apartment kitchen from the fire escape. Jane’s place was always filled with paper, various reports and notes jotted down as they occurred to her on napkins and post its. Pens were in shorter supply since Jane always put them in her pocket and forgot about them. Darcy found a click top with blue ink.

She took off her hoodie and rolled up the sleeve of her t-shirt. She could leave her own marks, with her own type of love worth no less than the others. God had said so anyway. Her own name, on her own skin, like Jane’s Science and Thor’s Battle Scars. It meant as much as any soul mark. Maybe more, if she put it there herself.

Darcy pulled on her hoodie, not quite willing to share it with the rest of the world yet. Instead she took out her phone and started looking up tattoo parlours.

 

**Author's Note:**

> It took way too long to write about someone like me.  
> Please only say nice things.


End file.
